A sweetener
NBC News looks into the facts about Bidens and Ukraine and money.
As vice president, the elder Biden lead the U.S. diplomatic efforts to bolster the country’s fledgling democracy and root out corruption after mass protests ousted the country’s pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Biden spoke frequently with Ukrainian leaders and in April 2014, he traveled to Ukraine, bringing financial support and warning the Russians — who had recently annexed Crimea — to stop intervening in Ukrainian sovereignty.
That all seems good. But the next paragraphs…
In May 2014, Hunter Biden was hired by a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, as a board member reportedly making $50,000 a month. He stopped working with the company earlier this year.
The company had ties to Yanukovych, raising eyebrows among White House aides and others who saw potential for a conflict of interest. The Obama White House said at the time that the younger Biden was a private citizen, and that there was no conflict of interest.
Come on. Of course there’s a conflict of interest! There’s also the matter of appearances. People in government must not only be incorruptible they must be seen to be incorruptible. Joe Biden’s kid taking a wildly lucrative position with a Ukrainian company the same year his father the VP was active in Ukraine does not look incorruptible. It looks, at the very least, like Biden Junior eagerly cashing in on his father’s job – and why would anyone in the administration want that?
I know next to nothing about business and being on boards and so on, but surely 50 k a month is a hell of a lavish salary for being on a board, which I take to be not the same as an actual full-time job? I take it Biden Junior didn’t move to Ukraine? Presumably he just Skyped it in when there were meetings?
And the other point is, why would a Ukrainian company hire some random American lawyer to be on their board? They wouldn’t. They hired a Biden because he’s a Biden. Yes, Virginia, that fucking is a conflict of interest.
It seems we’ve gotten so used to this miserable pay for play routine that we can’t even see it any more. Clinton charged $$$ for access to him when he was president, and bragged about it – he said money couldn’t buy his vote but it could buy access to him. He said that out in the open, as if it were obviously fair and reasonable and not at all corrupt.
But there’s little evidence he acted to help his son: Earlier this year, Bloomberg News, citing documents and an interview with a former Ukrainian official, reported the Burisma investigation had been dormant for more than a year by the time Biden called for the crackdown on corruption. The then-Ukrainian prosecutor general told the news agency he found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden and his son. And PolitiFact reported it found no evidence to “support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son’s interests in mind.”
Additionally, the most recent former prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg he had no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.
That’s all good, but it doesn’t make the arrangement okay.
Re: boards, you’ve pretty much guessed it. Seats on the board are granted for various reasons, but alliances/access is a huge one. It seems obvious to me that Biden Junior was offered that seat because of his father and the access that they might have through Junior to him. During my brief tenure as a tech startup business owner, my mind positively reeled at the shenanigans of my partner (a professional startup businessman who fostered tech inventors), and how he schemed to get influential people onto our board. Of course, the bigger the influence, the more money and stock must be waved under their noses to get them to take the seat.
Yeah, I see it as possible that Ukraine offered the position to get in good with the US vice president without any assistance or hints from Biden. But Hunter Biden should have declined the position. It is the only ethical thing to do.
He should have declined, if he didn’t decline his father should have told him he had to (and in the event of any talk of being a grown-ass adult his father should have pointed out that the offer was because of him so he got to veto), if neither of those things happened the administration should have put its foot down. All parties should have behaved better. This is completely ridiculous.
There was stuff in that New Yorker profile of Hunter Biden about his financial difficulties…which were born of actions like buying a hugely expensive house in DC and then not being able to afford it. Well DUH. Live within your means, asshole, don’t do things that at least look corrupt in order to be able to buy expensive houses in Kalorama. The world doesn’t owe Hunter Biden a huge expensive house.
Someone said — was it you, Ophelia? — that maybe the Bidens did nothing legally “wrong”, but they sure did give plenty of ammunition to Trump, for exactly the reasons you and iknklast@2 say.
Ultimately I don’t know what Joe Biden could have done if Hunter flat-out refused to not take the position. I guess he could have made it public that this was being done against his will. Certainly they shouldn’t have announced there’s no conflict of interest, as that’s just insulting our intelligence.
Thank you, Skeletor, that’s why I said “He should have declined, if he didn’t decline his father should have told him he had to (and in the event of any talk of being a grown-ass adult his father should have pointed out that the offer was because of him so he got to veto), if neither of those things happened the administration should have put its foot down. Emphasis added. But thanks for crossing Ts I had already crossed.
You’re welcome, Ophelia. Double-crossed Ts are the best Ts.
My apparently poorly expressed attempted point is I don’t know if Joe had any way to veto, and I don’t know if the administration had any legal authority to put their foot down, if by that you mean actually stop Hunter Biden from taking the job.
In that case their public stance should have been severe disapproval. Instead they basically did the opposite and said it was fine.
Yeah legal authority I don’t know either, but all the moral authority in the world. Hunter was given this bribe dressed up as a seat on a board SOLELY because of his father’s position in Obama’s administration. Obama could have told him if you take that seat I will have to replace Joe with someone else. Could have and should have. I don’t know what they were THINKING.
I agree on the moral authority. Obama threatening Joe if he didn’t control his son is an interesting idea, and I wouldn’t have been opposed to that. Because, as you say, they weren’t paying Hunter that kind of money for any reason other than his political connections.
“If your dad is no longer VP would you even have this job? No? Then you shouldn’t have it now.”
Yes, if, hypothetically, HB insisted on taking the position against JB’s wishes, then JB should have resigned.
Exactly.
Joe wouldn’t have needed to threaten resignation. All he would have had to do was tell the company “let me disabuse you of any impression that having my son on the board will help you with this administration. It won’t. To the contrary, it creates an ethical and political problem for me and my president and we just don’t want the headache.” What company is going to pay Hunter a sinecure just to tick off the very person they’re hoping to influence?
Hmmm. I wonder. Are you sure Burisma wouldn’t have thought Biden was just saying that for the record, with his fingers crossed? That it was a wink wink thing? Especially given that Biden had been in the Senate for decades and so had to be well familiar with all this cozy jobs for the boys in exchange for favors stuff?